The Kusakabe Kimbei Studio, the largest photography studio in Japan at the turn of the century, was known for its beautifully hand-colored prints, wide variety of images, and lacquer album covers. The photographs in each album were selected by the studio’s tourist-customers from its extensive inventory and typically included views of Mount Fuji, famous shrines and temples, picturesque villages and landscapes, and portraits and genre scenes staged in the studio—a samurai, a geisha, tea ceremony, spinning cotton, even harakiri.